Trivia: Arguably the most popular -- and certainly the busiest -- movie leading man in Hollywood history, John Wayne entered the film business while working as a laborer on the Fox lot during summer vacations from U.S.C., which he attended on a football scholarship. He met and was befriended by John Ford, a young director who was beginning to make a name for himself in action films, comedies, and dramas. Wayne was cast in small roles in Ford's late-'20s films, occasionally under the name Duke Morrison. It was Ford who recommended Wayne to director Raoul Walsh for the male lead in the 1930 epic Western The Big Trail, and, although it was a failure at the box office, the movie showed Wayne's potential as a leading man. During the next nine years, be busied himself in a multitude of B-Westerns and serials -- most notably Shadow of the Eagle and The Three Mesquiteers series -- in between occasional bit parts in larger features such as Warner Bros.' Baby Face, starring Barbara Stanwyck. But it was in action roles that Wayne excelled, exuding a warm and imposing manliness onscreen to which both men and women could respond. In 1939, Ford cast Wayne as the Ringo Kid in the adventure Stagecoach, a brilliant Western of modest scale but tremendous power (and incalculable importance to the genre), and the actor finally showed what he could do. Wayne nearly stole a picture filled with Oscar-caliber performances, and his career was made. He starred in most of Ford's subsequent major films, whether Westerns (Fort Apache [1948], She Wore a Yellow Ribbon [1949], Rio Grande [1950], The Searchers [1956]); war pictures (They Were Expendable [1945]); or serious dramas (The Quiet Man [1952], in which Wayne also directed some of the action sequences). He also starred in numerous movies for other directors, including several extremely popular World War II thrillers (Flying Tigers [1942], Back to Bataan [1945], Fighting Seabees [1944], Sands of Iwo Jima [1949]); costume action films (Reap the Wild Wind [1942], Wake of the Red Witch [1949]); and Westerns (Red River [1948]). His box-office popularity rose steadily through the 1940s, and by the beginning of the 1950s he'd also begun producing movies through his company Wayne-Fellowes, later Batjac, in association with his sons Michael and Patrick (who also became an actor). Most of these films were extremely successful, and included such titles as Angel and the Badman (1947), Island in the Sky (1953), The High and the Mighty (1954), and Hondo (1953). The 1958 Western Rio Bravo, directed by Howard Hawks, proved so popular that it was remade by Hawks and Wayne twice, once as El Dorado and later as Rio Lobo. At the end of the 1950s, Wayne began taking on bigger films, most notably The Alamo (1960), which he produced and directed, as well as starred in. It was well received but had to be cut to sustain any box-office success (the film was restored to full length in 1992). During the early '60s, concerned over the growing liberal slant in American politics, Wayne emerged as a spokesman for conservative causes, especially support for America's role in Vietnam, which put him at odds with a new generation of journalists and film critics. Coupled with his advancing age, and a seeming tendency to overact, he became a target for liberals and leftists. However, his movies remained popular. McLintock!, which, despite well-articulated statements against racism and the mistreatment of Native Americans, and in support of environmentalism, seemed to confirm the left's worst fears, but also earned more than ten million dollars and made the list of top-grossing films of 1963-1964. Virtually all of his subsequent movies, including the pro-Vietnam War drama The Green Berets (1968), were very popular with audiences, but not with critics. Further controversy erupted with the release of The Cowboys, which outraged liberals with its seeming justification of violence as a solution to lawlessness, but it was successful enough to generate a short-lived television series. Amid all of the shouting and agonizing over his politics, Wayne won an Oscar for his role as marshal Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, a part that he later reprised in a sequel. Wayne weathered the Vietnam War, but, by then, time had become his enemy. His action films saw him working alongside increasingly younger co-stars, and the decline in popularity of the Western ended up putting him into awkward contemporary action films like McQ (1974). Following his final film, The Shootist (1976) -- possibly his best Western since The Searchers -- the news that Wayne was stricken ill with cancer (which eventually took his life in 1979) wiped the slate clean, and his support for the Panama Canal Treaty at the end of the 1970s belatedly made him a hero for the left. Wayne finished his life honored by the film community, the U.S. Congress, and the American people as had no actor before or since. He remains among the most popular actors of his generation, as evidenced by the continual rereleases of his films on home video.

Trivia: John Agar was one of a promising group of leading men to emerge in the years after World War II. He never became the kind of star that he seemed destined to become in mainstream movies, but he did find a niche in genre films a decade later. Agar was the son of a Chicago meatpacker and never aspired to an acting career until fate took a hand in 1945, when he met Shirley Temple, the former child star and one of the most famous young actresses in Hollywood. In a whirlwind romance, the 17-year-old Temple married the 25-year-old Agar. His good looks made him seem a natural candidate for the screen and, in 1946, he was signed to a six-year contract by producer David O. Selznick. He never actually appeared in any of Selznick's movies, but his services were loaned out at a considerable profit to the producer, beginning in 1948 with his screen debut (opposite Temple) in John Ford's classic cavalry drama Fort Apache, starring John Wayne and Henry Fonda. His work in that movie led to a still larger role in Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, also starring Wayne. Those films were to mark the peak of Agar's mainstream film career, though John Wayne, who took a liking to the younger actor, saw to it that he had a major role in The Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), which was one of the most popular war movies of its era. In 1949, however, Temple divorced Agar and his career slowed considerably; apart from the film he did with Wayne, the most notable aspect of his career that year was his appearance in the anti-Communist potboiler I Married a Communist (aka The Woman on Pier 13). During the early '50s, he appeared in a series of low-budget programmers such as The Magic Carpet, one of Lucille Ball's last feature films prior to the actress becoming a television star, and played leads in second features, including the offbeat comedy The Rocket Man. Agar seemed destined to follow in the same downward career path already blazed by such failed mid-'40s leading men as Sonny Tufts, when a film came along at Universal-International in 1955 that gave his career a second wind. The studio was preparing a sequel to its massively popular Creature From the Black Lagoon, directed by Jack Arnold, and needed a new leading man; Agar's performance in an independent film called The Golden Mistress had impressed the studio and he was signed to do the movie. Revenge of the Creature, directed by Arnold, was nearly as successful as its predecessor, and Agar had also come off well, playing a two-fisted scientist. He was cast as the lead in Arnold's next science fiction film, Tarantula, then in a Western, Star in the Dust, and then in The Mole People, another science fiction title. In between, he also slipped in a leading-man performance in Hugo Haas' crime drama Hold Back Tomorrow. He left Universal when the studio refused to give him roles in a wider range of movies, but his career move backfired, limiting him almost entirely to science fiction and Western movies for the next decade. In 1956, the same year that he did The Mole People, Agar made what was arguably the most interesting of all his 1950s films, Flesh and the Spur, directed by Edward L. Cahn for American International. The revenge Western, in which he played a dual role, wasn't seen much beyond the drive-in circuit, however, and was not widely shown on television; it is seldom mentioned in his biographies despite the high quality of the acting and writing. Agar was most visible over the next few years in horror and science fiction films, including Daughter of Dr. Jekyll, Attack of the Puppet People, The Brain From Planet Arous, Invisible Invaders, and Journey to the Seventh Planet. Every so often, he would also work in a mainstream feature such as Joe Butterfly or odd independent features like Lisette, but it was the science fiction films that he was most closely associated with and where he found an audience and a fandom. Coupled with his earlier movies for Universal, those films turned Agar into one of the most visible and popular leading men in science fiction cinema and a serious screen hero to millions of baby-boomer preteens and teenagers. The fact that his performances weren't bad -- and as in The Brain From Planet Arous, were so good they were scary -- also helped. It required a special level of talent to make these movies work and Agar was perfect in them, very convincing whether playing a man possessed by aliens invaders or a scientist trying to save the Earth. In 1962, he made Hand of Death, a film seemingly inspired in part by Robert Clarke's The Hideous Sun Demon, about a scientist transformed into a deadly monster, that has become well known in the field because of its sheer obscurity: The movie has dropped out of distribution and nobody seems to know who owns it or even who has materials on Hand of Death. By the time of its release, however, this kind of movie was rapidly losing its theatrical audience, as earlier examples from the genre (including Agar's own Universal titles) began showing up regularly on television. Hollywood stopped making them and roles dried up for the actor. He appeared in a series of movies for producer A.C. Lyles, including the Korean War drama The Young and the Brave and a pair of Westerns, Law of the Lawless and Johnny Reno, both notable for their casts of aging veteran actors, as well as in a few more science fiction films. In Arthur C. Pierce's Women of the Prehistoric Planet, Agar pulled a Dr. McCoy, playing the avuncular chief medical officer in the crew of a spaceship and also had starring roles in a pair of low-budget Larry Buchanan films for American International Pictures, Zontar, the Thing From Venus and Curse of the Swamp Creature. Amid all of these low-budget productions, however, Agar never ceased to try and keep his hand in mainstream entertainment -- there were television appearances that showed what he could do as a serious actor, perhaps most notably the 1959 Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Caretaker's Cat" (where he was billed as "John G. Agar," perhaps an effort to separate that work from his recent films) and tragic title role in the Branded episode "The Sheriff" (1967); and he always seemed to give 100% effort in those less classy oaters, horror outings, and space operas.His career after that moved into the realm of supporting and character parts, including a small but key role in Roger Corman's first big-budget, big-studio film The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. He returned to working with John Wayne in three Westerns, The Undefeated, Chisum, and Big Jake, and turned up every so often in bit parts and supporting roles, sometimes in big-budget, high-profile films such as the 1976 remake of King Kong, but mostly he supported himself by selling insurance. In the 1990s, however, Agar was rediscovered by directors such as John Carpenter, who began using him in their movies and television productions, and he worked onscreen in small roles into the 21st century until his death in 2002.

Trivia: In films from 1943, pugnacious American character actor Wally Cassell was afforded star billing for the first time in The Story of GI Joe (1945). As Private Dondaro, Cassell spent half of his time searching for his ethnic roots in war-torn Italy, and the other half seeking out wine, women and more wine. His other war-related filmic efforts included Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and Flying Leathernecks (1951). He later appeared in westerns, then worked steadily during the late-1950s gangster-movie cycle, playing such raffish characters as Cherry Nose in I Mobster (1959). Wally Cassell was married to musical performer Marcy Maguire.

Trivia: Though born in Michigan, Adele Mara exuded enough exotic Latin charm to be hired as a vocalist by bandleader Xavier Cugat. In 1941, she was signed to a Columbia Pictures contract, appearing in large roles and small in everything from 2-reel comedies to "B" features like Alias Boston Blackie (1941). She became a star at Republic Studios in the mid-1940s, appearing in many a Republic musical and melodrama and adorning lockers all over the world in cheesecake pin-ups; among her last assignments at Republic was the big-budget 1949 war epic Sands of Iwo Jima. In the late 1950s, Adele Mara curtailed her screen activities upon her marriage to TV producer Roy Huggins.

Trivia: Forrest Tucker occupied an odd niche in movies -- though not an "A" movie lead, he was, nonetheless, a prominent "B" picture star and even a marquee name, who could pull audiences into theaters for certain kinds of pictures. From the early/mid-1950s on, he was a solid presence in westerns and other genre pictures. Born Forrest Meredith Tucker in Plainfield, Indiana in 1919, he was bitten by the performing bug early in life -- he made his debut in burlesque while he was still under-age. Shortly after graduating from high school in 1937, he enlisted in the United States Army, joining a cavalry unit. Tucker next headed for Hollywood, where his powerful build and six-foot-four frame and his enthusiasm were sufficient to get him a big-screen debut in The Westerner (1940), starring Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan. Signed to Columbia Pictures, he mostly played anonymous tough-guy roles over the next two years, primarily in B pictures, before entering the army in 1943. Resuming his career in 1946, he started getting bigger roles on a steady basis in better pictures, and in 1948 signed with Republic Pictures. He became a mainstay of that studio's star roster, moving up to a co-starring role in Sands Of Iwo Jima (1949), which also brought him into the professional orbit of John Wayne, the movie's star. Across the early/middle 1950s, Tucker starred in a brace of action/adventure films and westerns, alternating between heroes and villains, building up a significant fan base. By the mid-1950s, he was one of the company's top box-office draws. As it also turned out, Tucker's appeal was international, and he went to England in the second half of the decade to play starring roles in a handful of movies. At that time, British studios such as Hammer Films needed visiting American actors to boost the international appeal of their best productions, and Tucker fulfilled the role admirably in a trio of sci-fi/horror films: The Crawling Eye, The Cosmic Monsters, and The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas. Part of Tucker's motivation for taking these roles, beyond the money, he later admitted, was his desire to sample the offerings of England's pubs -- Tucker was a two-fisted drinker and, in those days, was well able to handle the effects of that activity so that it never showed up on-screen. And he ran with the opportunity afforded by those three science fiction movies -- each of those films, he played a distinctly different role, in a different way, but always with a certain fundamental honesty that resonated with audiences. When he returned to Hollywood, he was cast as Beauregard Burnside in Auntie Mame (1958), which was the top-grossing movie of the year. Then stage director Morton De Costa, seeing a joyful, playful romantic huckster in Tucker (where others had mostly seen an earnest tough-guy), picked him to star as Professor Harold Hill in the touring production of The Music Man -- Tucker played that role more than 2000 times over the years that followed. He was also the star of the 1964 Broadway show Fair Game For Lovers (in a cast that included Leo Genn, Maggie Hayes, and a young Alan Alda), which closed after eight performances. The Music Man opened a new phase for Tucker's career. The wily huckster became his image, one that was picked up by Warner Bros.' television division, which cast him in the role of Sgt. Morgan O'Rourke, the charmingly larcenous post-Civil War cavalry soldier at the center of the western/spoof series F-Troop. That series only ran for two seasons, but was in syndicated reruns for decades afterward, and though Tucker kept his hand in other media -- returning to The Music Man and also starring in an unsold pilot based on the movie The Flim-Flam Man (taking over the George C. Scott part), it was the part of O'Rourke with which he would be most closely identified for the rest of his life. He did occasionally take tougher roles that moved him away from the comedy in that series -- in one of the better episodes of the series Hondo, entitled "Hondo And The Judas", he played Colonel William Clark Quantrill very effectively. At the end of the decade, he returned to straight dramatic acting, most notably in the John Wayne western Chisum, in which he played primary villain Lawrence Murphy. That same year, he appeared in a challenging episode of the series Bracken's World entitled "Love It Or Leave It, Change It Or Lose It", playing "Jim Grange," a sort of film-a-clef version of John Wayne -- a World War II-era film star known for his patriotism, Grange is determined to express his political views while working alongside a young film star (portrayed by Tony Bill) who is closely associated with the anti-war movement. Tucker continued getting television work and occasional film roles, in addition to returning to the straw-hat circuit, mostly as Professor Harold Hill. None of his subsequent series lasted very long, but he was seldom out of work, despite a drinking problem that did worsen significantly during his final decade. In his final years, he had brought that under control, and was in the process of making a comeback -- there was even talk of an F-Troop revival in film form -- when he was diagnosed with lung cancer and emphysema. He died in the fall of 1986 at age 67.

Trivia: Recruited from the stage, Richard Webb was signed to a standard Paramount contract in 1941. After playing bits in such films as Among the Living (1941) Sullivan's Travels (1942) and I Wanted Wings (1942), Webb served as a Captain in World War II. Upon his return, he was briefly groomed for stardom. He played such sizeable supporting roles as Jim in Out of the Past (1947), Private Shipley in Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and Sir Galahad in A Connecticut Yankee in King's Arthur's Court, but his only top-billed assignment was the 1950 Republic serial The Invisible Monster. In 1952, Webb landed the role of Captain Midnight in the TV series of the same name, earning the hero worship of kids everywhere--and the animosity of the Captain Midnight producers when he refused to drink the sponsor's product, Ovaltine, in public (he hated the stuff!) Webb went on to star in the 1959 syndicated TVer US Border Patrol, then did guest spots on such series as Gunsmoke, Lassie and Get Smart. In the '70s Webb turned to writing, publishing four books on psychic phenomena, including the 1974 reincarnation study These Came Back. Suffering from cancer and a respiratory ailment, Richard Webb committed suicide in 1993.

Trivia: Armed with extensive radio and stage credits, Arthur Franz made his first film appearance in 1948's Jungle Patrol. Franz has been prominently featured in a number of "fantastic" films: he played one-third of the title role in Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951), and had leads in Flight to Mars (1952), Invaders From Mars (1953), and The Atomic Submarine (1960). He has also thrived in military characterizations in films like Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), Submarine Command (1951), and The Caine Mutiny (1954). His finest screen portrayal was as the psychopathic "hero" of Stanley Kramer's The Sniper (1952). Arthur Franz flourished as a character actor into the 1980s, retiring from films after appearing in That Championship Season (1982).

Trivia: Born to a wealthy Denver banker/oilman, Jacqueline Wells began her 35-year film career as a child actress in 1923. She left films near the end of the silent era to study acting at the Pasadena Playhouse and dancing with Theodore Kosloff. The newly blonde Ms. Wells returned to films in 1932, briefly (and reluctantly) billed as Diane Duval until signed to a Paramount contract in 1933. A reigning queen of "B"-pictures throughout the 1930s, Jacqueline worked at Universal (The Black Cat [1934]), Monogram (The Mouthpiece [1934]) and Hal Roach (The Bohemian Girl [1936]) before settling into a 2-year tenure as all-purpose leading lady at Columbia. Feeling that her career was slowing to a halt, she reinvented herself, transforming from imperiled ingenue Jacqueline Wells to the self-assured, quip-for-all-occasions Julie Bishop. Though many of her roles under her new name were secondary, they attracted attention to her acting abilities, and even gave her an occasional opportunity to sing. Among her better "Julie Bishop" assignments were such roles as Mrs. Ira Gershwin in Rhapsody in Blue (1945) and John Wayne's wistful one-night stand in Sands of Iwo Jima (1949). In 1953, Wells/Bishop co-starred with Bob Cummings on the 39-week TV sitcom My Hero. Julie Bishop is the mother of actress Pamela Shoop, her daughter by her third husband, Dr. Clarence Shoop.

Trivia: Born R. Hanley Jaeckel (the "R" stood for nothing), young Richard Jaeckel arrived in Hollywood with his family in the early 1940s. Columnist Louella Parsons, a friend of Jaeckel's mother, got the boy a job as a mailman at the 20th Century-Fox studios. When the producers of Fox's Guadalcanal Diary found themselves in need of a baby-faced youth to play a callow marine private, Jaeckel was given a screen test. Despite his initial reluctance to play-act, Jaeckel accepted the Guadalcanal Diary assignment and remained in films for the next five decades, appearing in almost 50 movies and playing everything from wavy-haired romantic leads to crag-faced villains. Between 1944 and 1948, Jaeckel served in the U.S. Navy. Upon his discharge, he co-starred in Sands of Iwo Jima with John Wayne and Forrest Tucker. In 1971, Jaeckel was nominated for a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar on the strength of his performance in Sometimes a Great Notion. Richard Jaeckel has also been a regular in several TV series, usually appearing in dependable, authoritative roles: he was cowboy scout Tony Gentry in Frontier Circus (1962), Lt. Pete McNeil in Banyon (1972), firefighter Hank Myers in Firehouse (1974), federal agent Hank Klinger in Salvage 1 (1979), Major Hawkins in At Ease (1983) (a rare -- and expertly played -- comedy role), and Master Chief Sam Rivers in Supercarrier (1988). From 1991-92, Jaeckel played Lieutenant Ben Edwards on the internationally popular series Baywatch. Jaeckel passed away at the Motion Picture & Television Hospital of an undisclosed illness at the age of 70.

Trivia: American actor/director George Tyne began his performing career under his own name, Martin "Buddy" Yarus, in films as varied as Errol Flynn's Objective Burma (1945) and Laurel and Hardy's Dancing Masters (1943). Under the new soubriquet George Tyne, the actor had sizable roles in a multitude of films from 1946 to the late '70s. One of his better parts during this period was as Pfc. Harris in the splashy John Wayne war epic Sands of Iwo Jima (1949); he could also be seen in Thieves' Highway (1949), No Way Out (1950), Marlowe (1969) and I Will, I Will...For Now (1976). Turning increasingly to TV directing in the '60s, George Tyne worked extensively behind the camera on such situation comedies as The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1968-70), Love American Style (1969-72) and Sanford and Son (1972-77).

Trivia: Character actor Hal Baylor made a career out of pummeling (or being pummeled by) heroes ranging from John Wayne to Montgomery Clift. The 6'3", 210-pound Baylor, born Hal Fieberling, was an athlete in school and did a hitch in the United States Marines before embarking on a boxing career. He moved into acting in the late '40s, initially by way of one of the most acclaimed boxing films ever made in Hollywood, Robert Wise's The Set-Up (1949), playing Tiger Nelson, the young fighter in the film, whose fresh good looks stood out from the pug-worn visages of most of the men around him. His first released film, however -- a short feature done after The Set-Up but released first -- was a very different kind of boxing movie, Joe Palooka in Winner Take All. He also appeared in Allan Dwan's 1949 The Sands of Iwo Jima, playing Private "Sky" Choyuski, which was where he first began working with John Wayne. All of those early appearances were credited under his real name, Hal Fieberling (sometimes spelled "Feiberling"), but by 1950 the actor had changed his name to Hal Baylor. Whether in Westerns, period dramas, or war movies, Baylor usually played tough guys, and as soon as John Wayne began producing movies, he started using him, in Big Jim McLain (1952), in which Baylor played one of the two principal villains, a tough, burly Communist (just to show, from the movie's point of view, that they weren't all slimy-mannered, smooth-talking intellectuals) who is always getting in the face of Wayne's two-fisted investigator, and who is bounced all over the set in the film's climactic punch-up; and in Island in the Sky (1953), as Stankowski the engineer. As with any working character actor, his films ranged in quality from John Ford's exquisite period drama The Sun Shines Bright (1953) to Lee Sholem's juvenile science fiction-adventure Tobor the Great (1954), and every class of picture in between. If anything, he was even busier on television; beginning in 1949 with an appearance on The Lone Ranger, Baylor was a fixture on the small screen in villainous parts. He was downright ubiquitous in Westerns during the 1950s and early '60s, working regularly in Gunsmoke, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Cheyenne, Have Gun Will Travel, 26 Men, The Californians, Maverick, and The Alaskans; Rawhide, The Virginian, The Rifleman, Bonanza, Bat Masterson, The Big Valley, and Temple Houston (the latter allowing him to hook up with actor/producer Jack Webb, who would become one of his regular employers in the mid- to late '60s). During the mid-'60s, as Westerns faded from the home screen, Baylor got more work in crime shows, sometimes as police officers but more often as criminals, including a notably violent 1967 episode of Dragnet entitled "The Shooting," in which he and diminutive character actor Dick Miller played a Mutt-and-Jeff pair of would-be cop killers. He also played a brief comic-relief role in the Star Trek episode "City on the Edge of Forever," as a 1930s police officer who confronts a time-transported Captain Kirk and First Officer Spock stealing clothes. Baylor's career was similar to that of his fellow tough-guy actors Leo Gordon, Jack Elam, and Lee Van Cleef, almost always centered on heavies, and, like Gordon, on those rare occasions when he didn't play a villain, Baylor stood out -- in Joseph Pevney's Away All Boats (1956), he proved that he could act without his fists or his muscle, with a memorable portrayal of the chaplain of the attack transport Belinda; but it was his heavies that stood out, none more so than his portrayal of the anti-Semitic Private Burnecker in Edward Dmytryk's The Young Lions, tormenting and then beating Jewish draftee Montgomery Clift to a bloody pulp, before being similarly pummeled himself. During the later '60s, he acquired the nickname around the industry as "the Last of the Bigtime Bad Guys," with 500 television shows and 70 movies to credit and still working, in everything from Disney comedies (The Barefoot Executive, Herbie Rides Again) to cutting-edge science fiction (A Boy and His Dog). At the end of his career, he returned to Westerns in The Macahans, the two-hour made-for-television feature starring James Arness (who had used Baylor numerous times on Gunsmoke, and had known him at least since they both worked in Big Jim McLain) that served as the pilot for the series How the West Was Won.

Trivia: Red-headed, freckle-faced Martin Milner was only 15 when he made his screen debut in Life With Father (1947), and would continue to play wide-eyed high schoolers and college kids well into the next decade. His early film assignments included the teenaged Marine recruit in Lewis Milestone's The Halls of Montezuma (1951) and the obnoxious suitor of Jeanne Crain in Belles on Their Toes (1952). His first regular TV series was The Stu Erwin Show (1950-1955), in which he played the boyfriend (and later husband) of Stu's daughter Joyce. More mature roles came his way in Marjorie Morningstar (1957) as Natalie Wood's playwright sweetheart and in The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) as the jazz musician targeted for persecution by Winchell-esque columnist Burt Lancaster. Beginning in 1960, he enjoyed a four-year run as Corvette-driving Tod Stiles on TV's Route 66 (a statue of Milner and his co-star George Maharis currently stands at the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY). A longtime friend and associate of producer/director/actor Jack Webb, Milner was cast as veteran L.A.P.D. patrolman Pete Malloy on the Webb-produced TV weekly Adam-12, which ran from 1968 to 1975. His later TV work included a short-lived 1970s series based on Johan Wyss' Swiss Family Robinson. Later employed as a California radio personality, Martin Milner continued to make occasional TV guest appearances; one of these was in the 1989 TV movie Nashville Beat, in which he was reunited with his Adam-12 co-star Kent McCord. He made an appearance on the short-lived series The New Adam-12 and had recurring roles on shows like Life Goes On and Murder, She Wrote. Milner died in 2015, at age 83.

Trivia: American actor Dick Wessel had a face like a Mack Truck bulldog and a screen personality to match. After several years on stage, Wessel began showing up in Hollywood extra roles around 1933; he is fleetingly visible in the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933), Laurel and Hardy's Bonnie Scotland (1935), and the Columbia "screwball" comedy She Couldn't Take It (1935). The size of his roles increased in the '40s; perhaps his best feature-film showing was as the eponymous bald-domed master criminal in Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946). He was a valuable member of Columbia Pictures' short subject stock company, playing a variety of bank robbers, wrestlers, jealous husbands and lazy brother-in-laws. Among his more memorable 2-reel appearances were as lovestruck boxer "Chopper" in The Three Stooges' Fright Night (1947), Andy Clyde's invention-happy brother-in-law in Eight Ball Andy (1948), and Hugh Herbert's overly sensitive strongman neighbor in Hot Heir (1947). Wessel was shown to good (if unbilled) advantage as a handlebar-mustached railroad engineer in the superspectacular Around the World in 80 Days (1956), and had a regular role as Carney on the 1959 TV adventure series Riverboat. Dick Wessel's farewell screen appearance was as a harried delivery man in Disney's The Ugly Dachshund (1965).

Trivia: With his slight built, narrow face and pencil-thin mustache, I. Stanford Jolley did not exactly look trustworthy, and a great many of his screen roles (more than 500) were indeed to be found on the wrong side of the law. Isaac Stanford Jolley had toured as a child with his father's traveling circus and later worked in stock and vaudeville, prior to making his Broadway debut opposite Charles Trowbridge in Sweet Seventeen (1924). Radio work followed and he arrived in Hollywood in 1935. Pegged early on as a gangster or Western outlaw, Jolley graduated to playing lead henchman or the boss villain in the '40s, mostly appearing for such poverty-row companies as Monogram and PRC. Although Jolley is often mentioned as a regular member of the Republic Pictures' stock company, he was never under contract to that legendary studio and only appeared in 25 films for them between 1936 and 1954. From 1950 on, Jolley worked frequently on television and remained a busy performer until at least 1976. According to his widow, the actor, who died of emphysema at the Motion Picture Country Hospital, never earned more than 100 dollars on any given movie assignment. He was the father of art director Stan Jolley.

Trivia: A Broadway actor who also found marked success in celluloid with roles in such film noir classics as The Set-Up and The Narrow Margin, David Clarke embarked on an enduring screen career following his debut in the 1941 boxing drama Knockout. The Chicago native found a powerful ally in the business when he made fast friends with star Will Geer while pounding the boards in his hometown early on, and after being abandoned in Seattle following a failed touring play, the talented duo set their sights on Broadway. Both actors were hired to appear in the 1936 Broadway play 200 Were Chosen, and in the years that followed, both Geer and Clarke went on to achieve notable success on both stage and screen. Clarke also found frequent work on television on such popular series as Kojak and Wonder Woman as well as a recurring role in the small-screen drama Ryan's Hope. Clarke and Geer remained lifelong friends, appearing together in both the 1949 film Intruder in the Dust and the enduring television drama The Waltons -- in which Clarke made several guest appearances. David Clarke married actress Nora Dunfee in 1946; the couple would frequently appear together on-stage and remained wed until Dunfee's death in 1994. On April 18, 2004, David Clarke died of natural causes in Arlington, VA. He was 95.

Trivia: A top athlete at Brown University, Don Haggerty performed military service and did stage work before his movie-acting debut in 1947. Free-lancing, Haggerty put in time at virtually every studio from Republic to MGM, playing roles of varying sizes in films like Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) The Asphalt Jungle (1951), Angels in the Outfield (1951) and The Narrow Margin (1952). Most often, he was cast as a big-city detective or rugged westerner. During the first (1955-56) season of TV's The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Haggerty showed up semi-regularly as Marsh Murdock. Don Haggerty was the father of Grizzly Adams star Dan Haggerty.

Trivia: A rather bland RKO contract player of the 1940s, Bruce Edwards (born Edward Lester Smith) had appeared with the Bliss Hayden Art Theatre Group in Los Angeles prior to making his screen debut in 1941. A typical 4-F leading man, Edwards often played military officers in wartime melodramas. Because of his resemblance to Republic stunt performer Tom Steele, Edwards was awarded the starring role as novelist Steve Colt battling yet another megalomaniac in the 1947 serial The Black Widow. A far-from-spectacular serial hero, Edwards was demoted to a supporting role in Federal Agents vs. Underworld, Inc. (1949) and spent most of the following decade appearing in such television series as The Lone Rider and Adventures of Wild Bill Hickock.

Trivia: Some actresses may give off the aura from the screen of being larger than life, but Dorothy Ford presented that image for real, in person. Standing 6'2" tall, the dark-haired, beautifully proportioned Ford parlayed her height (which should have been an impediment) and good looks into a Hollywood career lasting more than 20 years. Born in Perris, CA, and raised in Santa Barbara, San Francisco, and Tucson, AZ, Ford appeared in school pageants and went into modeling after she graduated; her 38-26-38-and-a-half figure coupled with her 6'2" frame made her ideal for photographic work. Her first experience as a performer came about when Billy Rose cast Ford in his aquacade alongside Johnny Weissmuller. She also did a stint as an Earl Carroll showgirl, appearing in revues including Something to Shout About and Star Spangled Glamour. Ford's physique and striking good looks quickly brought her to the attention of casting offices, and she made her screen debut in 1942 in Lady in the Dark, playing a model. MGM put her under contract in 1943 and cast her in the musical Thousands Cheer (1944) and Broadway Rhythm (1944), in which she was seen sipping champagne with Charles Winninger; her other appearances that year included roles in Meet the People, Bathing Beauty, Two Girls and a Sailor, and The Thin Man Goes Home. She was seen in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) as part of an onscreen performing act, and worked in King Vidor's An American Romance (1945) before she left MGM. Ford took acting seriously and even spent time working and studying as a member of the Actors' Lab, the West Coast equivalent of New York's Group Theater. She did decidedly better in screen time and roles in her Universal Pictures debut, in Abbott and Costello's Here Come the Co-Eds (1945), which at last gave Ford a chance to act. Playing the towering captain of a women's basketball team appearing as "ringers" in a college game, Ford exuded confidence and boldness, as well as a sly streak, and dominated every shot she was in. Most of Ford's subsequent screen roles were genuine acting assignments. After a brief return to modeling in Rio de Janeiro, as part of South America's first postwar fashion show, she went back to MGM in Love Laughs at Andy Hardy, in which she played a young woman who is dateless until she crosses paths with Mickey Rooney -- the height difference between the actress and the diminutive star became a centerpiece of the plot. This was also Ford's first major role to play off of her height. By that time, Ford was often referred to in the press, in a complimentary manner, as a "Glamazon," and she was outspoken in encouraging more tall women to stand up for themselves: In one interview, she advised female readers that "if nature has made you tall, then be good and tall," chiding tall women who tried to stoop over or otherwise hide their height. Ford herself wore her 145 pounds extremely well and was regarded at one point in the 1940s as one of the most strikingly beautiful women in Hollywood. In an era in which Maureen O'Hara was regarded as formidable at 5'8", Ford made her 6'2" work for her, and not just in "freak" roles, which she resisted taking. Following an appearance in a New York stage production called The Big People, which played off of her height in a positive way, she was back in Hollywood in On Our Merry Way (1948), an unusual independently made anthology film. In 1949, she got cast in the Western Three Godfathers, directed by John Ford, and was given one of the more interesting parts of her career, portraying a woman who becomes the potential love interest of the character played by John Wayne in two key scenes. Ford's career slowed down considerably as the 1950s began. Her biggest role of all, in terms of screen time, came along in 1952 when she was cast in the Bud Abbott/Lou Costello comedy-fantasy Jack and the Beanstalk -- the movie gave her several choice bits of comedy and choreography with Lou Costello as a very tall woman in modern times and the servant of the giant in the fantasy sequences. Costello evidently liked Ford and appreciated her sense of humor, because he later put her into one installment of The Abbott & Costello Show ("The Vacuum Cleaner Salesman") on television. She also made small-screen appearances on The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet and The Red Skelton Show, among other series, during the 1950s. Following an appearance in the Bowery Boys vehicle Feudin' Fools, Ford's big-screen career wound down in some surprisingly high-visibility films; John Wayne cast Ford in The High and the Mighty (1954), in a small role as a glamour girl with her hooks into Phil Harris, and Billy Wilder used her in the opening segment of The Seven Year Itch (1955). Ford faded out of movies over the next couple of years in much lower-budgeted films, in a pure eye candy part in The Indestructible Man and as a stripper in Fritz Lang's Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. She remained involved with the movie business even after giving up acting, joining MGM as a technician in the studio's film lab beginning in 1965. Many of Ford's old films are still widely shown on cable, and -- often thanks to her presence -- remain inherently striking to contemporary viewers, who marvel at the boldness and beauty of this extraordinary screen figure.

Trivia: Allan Dwan was a filmmaker whose career almost outlasted his reputation. To many in the industry, his very best years were from the late teens to the mid-/late '20s, yet he was still making movies in the '50s. He managed to make important movies in each of the five decades in which he worked, including swashbucklers, Westerns, war dramas, and even one science fiction, all the while being regarded as an expert at comedy above all else. Dwan also lived long enough to see his career become the inspiration for a major feature film of the '70s, and he had the satisfaction of becoming an object of inquiry and even wonder for film scholars and historians in some instances whose parents hadn't even been born when he started in movies. Born Joseph Aloysius Dwan in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1885, he emigrated to the United States with his family in 1896. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame with an engineering degree and went to work for a lighting company. One of his employer's biggest clients was Essanay Films in Chicago, and while visiting them in 1909, he took a job there as a writer -- he did a little bit of everything (including acting) in the years that followed, and by 1911 he'd moved into the director's chair. By Dwan's own estimate, he contributed in some capacity -- as a writer, actor, producer, assistant director, director etc. -- to 1500 movies; other estimates are that he directed approximately 400 movies, although even this is uncertain because many of the movies he made during his first decade in the business are lost. (Production was very fast and record-keeping was imprecise -- and records are long gone.) In 1914 alone, among the movies that we do know about, some 15 films directed by or written and directed by Allan Dwan went into release. It would surprise those who only know him for his extraordinary longevity that, in those days, Dwan was a major innovator. For a man who was trained neither as a graphic artist nor as a dramatist, he was amazingly adept at achieving visually striking, dramatically effective shots that made their full impact easily on the audience. His training as an engineer served him extremely well; in a time when relatively few directors knew a lot about shooting scenes effectively, much less innovatively, Dwan had a special ability to frame a shot or scene in his mind and then devise a fresh and practical means of realizing the shot quickly and inexpensively. He was, by most accounts, responsible for the first use of a crane shot in a Hollywood movie, and also for the first dolly shot, achieving both of those milestones in the same year, 1915. He was not a visionary producer/director like D.W. Griffith, mapping out films set across vast canvases of space and time, or enacting pivotal moments in history, but he was a director solving problems in how to make movies better and developed approaches and techniques that became standard practice; Dwan occupied a rung only a step or two below Griffith in importance at a time when the film industry was reaching past adolescence. In some ways, his career anticipated the work of Mark Sandrich -- another engineering major-turned-director, who went on to make some of the best musicals and war movies of the '30s and early '40s -- by more than a decade. By 1916, Dwan was at the top of his profession, and over the next 15 years he was among the most favored directors in Hollywood, enjoying the special admiration of both Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Sr., who were the movies' top "power couple" of the period. Much of Dwan's reputation as a major filmmaker rested upon his directing of Fairbanks in Robin Hood (1922) and The Iron Mask (1929). Dwan's career faltered at around the time of the coming of sound, although he seemed to have adjusted to talking-picture production better than most of his fellow silent-era directors. He got very few major assignments in the years immediately after the advent of the talkies, and this seems principally a result of Dwan's flinty personality. He was much too talented to be left unemployed, but apparently he was also not a get-along, go-along type, or prone to hide his feelings about colleagues or superiors, and as a result, for the first eight years of the sound era, Dwan was kept fully employed but apparently wasn't considered for or offered any high-profile films. Hollywood Party (1934), on which he was one of several directors, is the only one of his films from the early '30s that is still shown even occasionally today. He made a comeback in 1937 when he directed Shirley Temple in Heidi, which was a huge success, and followed it up a year later with Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Over the next few years Dwan helmed several of 20th Century Fox's biggest productions, including Suez (1938), starring Tyrone Power and Annabella, and Frontier Marshal (1939), starring Randolph Scott. His real specialty dating from the silent era was perceived as comedy, however, and that same year he did the spoof The Three Musketeers, starring Don Ameche and the Ritz Brothers (whom he also directed in The Gorilla). His pace of work slackened at the start of the '40s -- his biggest picture was the all-star radio showcase Here We Go Again! (1942). Starting in 1944, Dwan began working for independent producer Edward Small on a string of comedies based on long-established titles, including Up in Mabel's Room, Getting Gertie's Garter, and Brewster's Millions. In 1949, he made the biggest -- and most enduring -- movie of his career, The Sands of Iwo Jima, starring John Wayne; among the most popular of all of Wayne's war movies, it struck a perfect balance between drama, narrative momentum, and action, and became the star's first Oscar-nominated performance, as well as one of the prizes of the entire Republic Pictures library. Dwan kept busy in the '50s working for Republic and later for producer Benedict Bogeaus in a multitude of genres including Westerns and war movies, and some of the former were very offbeat -- The Woman They Almost Lynched and Cattle Queen of Montana, the latter starring Barbara Stanwyck and Ronald Reagan, were two of the best of them. He was still showing inventiveness and a good sense of pacing with Slightly Scarlet in 1956, 45 years into his career, and he closed out his directorial efforts in 1958 with The Most Dangerous Man Alive, a surprisingly fine science thriller that was released in 1961. Dwan spent the next two decades in retirement and, though an elder member of the Hollywood community, was hardly ever an elder "statesman." In interviews, he was an outspoken, often salty-tongued critic of many of the people he'd known and worked with, scornful of those he regarded as fools and candidly recalling the faults, personal and professional, of figures such as Fairbanks. Dwan and his career, and his account of it, was one of the major sources of inspiration for the Peter Bogdanovich Hollywood homage Nickelodeon, the release of which in 1976 revived some interest in and memory of Dwan's work. Allan Dwan worked in movies longer than any other director of his generation, 49 years. And he saw the release of his final film 52 years after he'd started in the business, outliving virtually all of his contemporaries in the process -- he was, thus, a vital source of information about many figures in the film business who had passed into history before anyone ever thought it important enough to write any of its history.

Trivia: During his 20-year Hollywood career, American composer Victor Young wrote the scores to over 300 films. For the first three decades of his life, he was best known as a concert violinist. A child prodigy, Young was born in Chicago and raised in Poland, where he studied at the Warsaw Conservatory and made his debut with the Warsaw Philharmonic. At age 20, Young was appointed musical director of the Balaban & Katz theater chain, supervising live orchestrations for silent films. With 1936's Anything Goes, Young launched his career with the Paramount music department, where he would remain until his death in 1956. Outside of such Paramount projects as The Light That Failed (1939), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), Love Letters (1945), and The Greatest Show on Earth (1953), Young worked for Columbia (Golden Boy [1939]), Sam Goldwyn (My Foolish Heart [1949]), Republic (The Quiet Man [1953]), and Mike Todd Sr. (Around the World in 80 Days [1956]). He earned 20 Oscar nominations during his lifetime, and won for Around the World in 80 Days. Among the many Victor Young compositions which became popular hits were "Sweet Sue," "Love Me Tonight," and "Stella by Starlight" (from 1943's The Uninvited).

Trivia: The son of veteran film executive James A. Grainger, Edmund Grainger inaugurated his own movie career on the sales staff of Fox Studios. In 1931, Grainger was promoted to producer at Fox, turning out such product as The Holy Terror (1931); he then moved to Universal, where he produced the money-spinning Diamond Jim (1935)--unfortunately followed by the disastrous Sutter's Gold (1935). He worked briefly at Warner Bros. before entering into a long and lucrative association with actor John Wayne, first at Republic and then at RKO (coincidentally, Grainger's father had previously served as president of both studios). Edmund Grainger ended his career with such expensive MGM efforts as Home From the Hill (1960) and Cimarron (1961).

Trivia: James Edward Grant occupied an all but unique niche in Hollywood for just over 20 years, as a writer who was part of John Wayne's closest circle of friends and business associates. It was in that position that he exerted a unique degree of influence on the onscreen persona that Wayne presented, and on the content of a dozen of the actor's movies. Some actors had producers or directors that they preferred to work with, but Grant was unusual in his relationship to Wayne as a writer; the actor also trusted him sufficiently to let Grant direct one key film in the actor's output.Grant was also an unlikely denizen of Hollywood, and seems only to have moved to the film mecca as a result of some unfortunate events in his hometown of Chicago. He was born in the Windy City in 1905, and by the end of the 1920s was an up-and-coming journalist, in addition to writing fiction for magazines such as Liberty and Argosy. He was known best in Chicago as a newspaper reporter, but beginning in 1931 his major source of income was not obvious to the public -- Grant continued working as a reporter, but he was also secretly the speechwriter for Anton J. Cermak, who was elected mayor that year. For the next year or so, Grant led a double life, with most of his income derived from his relationship with Cermak -- and when the mayor was killed in an assassination attempt against President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, there went a big chunk of Grant's income. He turned to writing fiction in earnest, and his first book, The Green Shadow, was published in 1935. He later went out to Hollywood when the film rights were sold to RKO, for a movie version directed by Charles Vidor and starring Preston Foster (under the title Muss 'Em Up). Grant provided the stories to several films over the next year or two, and also turned to screenwriting with an early Otto Preminger-directed effort at 20th Century Fox starring Ann Sothern and Jack Haley, entitled Danger: Love at Work (1937).Grant kept selling stories and finally moved permanently to Hollywood, where he authored screenplays over the next few years, building up his reputation as a reliable and occasionally inspired writer with a gift for good dialogue. His big success came at MGM with Boom Town (1940), a Clark Gable/Spencer Tracy vehicle that showed both actors at (or near) their toughest and most virile. Grant scored a similar triumph with Mervyn LeRoy's Johnny Eager, which was a change-of-pace tough-guy vehicle for Robert Taylor. If not one of best writing talents available, Grant did deliver solid, reliable work, and most of the pictures that he wrote were successful, a few even getting good notices in the writing department. By the first half of the 1940s, he was successful enough to own a cattle ranch in the Central Valley.By 1945, Grant had moved over to Warner Bros., where he produced as well as wrote The Great John L., about the renowned prizefighter John L. Sullivan, portrayed by Errol Flynn, then the studio's top action star. It was around this time that Grant became close friends with John Wayne, who, over the previous five years, had ascended to his own unique brand of action stardom, mostly at Republic Pictures. Wayne was taking a closer interest than was typical among actors in the quality of the movie scripts he was offered -- he'd endured a decade of very lean times, of leading roles in B-Westerns and lesser parts in small major studio productions, and wanted to safeguard the stardom that had finally become his with John Ford's Stagecoach (1939). Wayne also needed to shelter some of his rapidly growing income by shifting it from salaried studio work as an actor to capital gains as a producer, and it was because of that -- and his desire to get his feet wet in the field of film production -- that he decided to take advantage of a clause in his contract that allowed him to produce movies.The result was Angel and the Badman (1947), in which Wayne cast himself as Quirt Evans, a fast-gun who is found near death by a Quaker family and nursed back to health, but who takes a little longer to understand their philosophy or appreciate it, or the attentions of their daughter (Gail Russell). Grant wrote the story and was chosen by Wayne to direct the movie, and the result was not only the one of the most interesting and rewarding of Wayne's early starring vehicles (at least, among those not directed by John Ford), but one of the most complex, in the script and the acting. And it was a success, and launched Wayne's career as a producer. Grant and Wayne collaborated on 11 more projects over the next 19 years. Although he was not involved in the writing of most of the films that Ford made with Wayne, he was responsible for Flying Leathernecks (1951), Big Jim McLain (1952), Trouble Along the Way, and Hondo (both 1953), and directed as well as provided the story to the Wayne-produced thriller Ring of Fear (1954). Additionally, they were personally very close drinking buddies who played chess all the time (with Grant reportedly never winning a game in 19 years).Additionally, Grant had Wayne's ear when it came to dialogue -- Wayne was reportedly convinced that, outside of the writers used by Ford in his films, Grant wrote the best dialogue he ever had to work with, and understood exactly what Wayne's fans wanted from the actor. Also, if Grant wrote strong parts for Wayne and other actors, he tended to write relatively weak roles for women, and that mix worked in most of the dozen movies he did with Wayne. Equally to the point, Grant reportedly knew exactly what Wayne wanted to hear, and was, in a sense, the ultimate sycophant/employee. According to director Frank Capra in his autobiography, in their contact over the filmmaker's abortive involvement with the movie Circus World (1964), Grant took pride in having helped persuade Wayne to stop making movies with Ford -- in doing this, however, he may have overplayed his hand as the actor's friend. Grant contributed to The Alamo (1960), as well as The Comancheros (1961), and worked on a Ford production the following year with Donovan's Reef. And when Wayne needed to get his production company out of the hole it had dug with immense cost of The Alamo, it was to Grant that he turned. The result was McLintock! (1963), a deceptively complex and serious comedy, which proved the most profitable of all of Wayne's 1960s releases.Somewhat ironically, McLintock! also proved a swan song for Grant's major influence on Wayne's career. By 1964, while contending with his own health problems, Wayne had come to recognize Grant's weaknesses, personal and otherwise; the man was obviously an alcoholic and was in declining health, and was becoming something of a burden, as when he managed to drive Capra off the shooting of Circus World. But Wayne never objected to the ideological statements that Grant put into his dialogue for Wayne, which defined the actor for the rest of his life. Beyond his work with Wayne, Grant also wrote the screenplays for such films as The Bullfighter and the Lady (1951) (bullfighting being one of his pet interests) and The Last Wagon (1956), and the original story for The Proud Rebel (1958). He died in early 1966, and his last film credit appeared over four years later with the release of Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971), which was based on Grant's screenplay.

Trivia: Alternately -- and justly -- tagged as "The Godfather of Soul," "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business," "Soul Brother No. 1," and "Mr. Dynamite," James Brown launched himself into the musical spotlight as a multi-talented R&B powerhouse with revolutionary gifts not only in the arena of vocal performance, but in those of songwriting, instrumentation, and dance. In the process, Brown -- unapologetically raw, ear-splitting (given his trademark scream), rambunctious, explicit, and dark-skinned -- not only obliterated stereotypes of what black musicians had to be, but paved the way for later African-American artists as disparate as Prince and Snoop Dogg. Generally believed to have been born in Barnwell, SC, on May 3, 1933, and christened James Joseph Brown Jr., Brown grew up on the proverbial wrong side of the tracks. Abandoned by his parents at a tender age and raised by relatives and in the ghetto streets, he drifted into crime as a youngster, and was quickly shuttled off to the Alto Reform School outside of Tocoa, GA, for car theft. At Alto, Brown met and forged a lifelong friendship with aspiring musician Bobby Byrd (born Bobby Day), who later became an integral fixture of Brown's stage act. Byrd's family sympathized with Brown's family plight and brought the youngster into their household; Brown and Byrd then forged a gospel group that evolved, by turns, into Brown's R&B backup band, the Flames, with Brown covering vocals and Byrd on keyboards. Gigs at local venues followed over the next few years, until a demo tape of the group's electrifying single "Please, Please, Please" landed on the desk of Cincinnati's King Records. The label signed Brown immediately, first on its spin-off label, Federal, then -- in 1961 -- on King proper. One of that label's LPs, a live album, truly worked magic for Brown's career: 1962's James Brown: Live at the Apollo. This now-legendary, oft-mythologized effort spanned only 30 minutes but sold millions of copies and put Brown on the cultural map. Brown continued to issue gold and platinum singles and LPs over the years, landing an unprecedented number of hits. These included "Night Train," "I Got You (I Feel Good)," "Mashed Potatoes U.S.A," the seminal "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," and "Shout and Shimmy." Brown's musical popularity continued unabated through the 1970s, before he reinvented himself in the '80s as a motion picture star. Brown made his most enduring cinematic impact during this period, with two A-list features: John Landis' anarchic musical road comedy The Blues Brothers (1980) and Sylvester Stallone's jingoistic Rocky IV (1985). In the former, Brown pulls from his gospel roots to play "jive-ass preacher" Reverend Cleophus James, the caped, microphone-wielding, arm-swinging minister of the Triple Rock Baptist Church, whose screamed admonition to Jake and Elwood Blues (John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd) -- "Have you seen the light?!" -- sends Jake hand-springing and back-flipping down the church aisles. In the fourth Rocky installment, Brown comes billed as "The Godfather of Soul" and, in a truly bizarre beat, performs a musical "warm-up" of "Living in America" with fighter Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) on a Las Vegas stage, before that pugilist's fatal exhibition match with Russian monstrosity Drago (Dolph Lundgren). Roger Ebert wrote of that moment, "this scene sets some kind of a record: It represents almost everything that the original 1976 Rocky Balboa would have found repellent." The public, however, did not concur. Consumers sent "Living in America" (the centerpiece of the movie soundtrack) to the top of the R&B charts and Rocky IV soaring over the 127-million-dollar mark. Brown's other two feature-film appearances include the outrageous Dan Aykroyd/Michael Pressman comedy Doctor Detroit (1983) -- as a bandleader -- and the lesser sequel Blues Brothers 2000 (1998), reprising his turn as Rev. Cleophus James. Brown also headlines a myriad of concert films, such as James Brown: Live in Concert (1979), James Brown: Soul Jubilee (1984), James Brown: Live at Chastain Park (1985), and James Brown: Live from the House of Blues (2000). Brown appeared, as well, on numerous TV programs, including Married...with Children (as himself) and King of the Hill (as the voice of Digby Wilkins). He also composed the scores for two 1973 blaxploitation flicks, Black Caesar and Slaughter's Big Ripoff. Cinematically, Brown's singles are, of course, omnipresent on hundreds of movie soundtracks -- everything from Jonathan Demme's Something Wild (1986) to Christopher Crowe's Off Limits (1987) to James Orr's Mr. Destiny (1990) to Adrian Lyne's Jacob's Ladder (1990) to Ron Howard's Apollo 13 (1995), with his "I Got You (I Feel Good)" the most common inclusion. In addition to his musical and film success, Brown suffered some negative publicity in the late '80s (and became a never-ending source of celebrity gossip) when he burst into an Augusta, GA insurance seminar wielding a shotgun. He subsequently jumped into a car, hit the interstate, and was chased by troopers down the freeway -- across two states. Upon apprehension, Brown faced a number of serious charges, including assault on a law officer and possession of angel dust. Brown was then sentenced by a judge to six years in prison, but paroled after only three. He returned to performing immediately thereafter. Meanwhile, the tabloids swirled with allegations of spousal battery as well. Brown remained thoroughly active on the musical scene during the last 15 years of his life, touring constantly, before he succumbed to pneumonia in the early hours of Christmas Day, 2006. A notorious ladies' man, he was survived by four wives and at least four children. In addition to his career as an entertainer, Brown was also a fervent social activist.